Asymptosis: Always Approaching

Month: November 2010

  • It’s The Health Care Costs, Stupid

    Get this straight: If health-care costs were rising at the same rate as inflation — even with our aging population — we wouldn’t have a budget problem. Congressional Budget Office: The red line is what Medicare plus Medicaid would look like in that scenario. So, for all you Democrats whining about how Obama should have tackled…

  • What ALL Americans – Liberals AND Conservatives – Want

    Washington’s Blog has a good list: Break Up the Unholy Alliance Between Big Government and Big Banks “the list of prominent economists and financial experts calling for the too big to fails to be broken up is wholly bipartisan:” Throw the Criminals In Jail “Everyone agrees that financial scammers must be tried and put in…

  • The Sky Is Falling

    According to the Congressional Budget Office, non-interest federal spending was 18.8 percent of GDP in 1980. In 2020 it is projected to be 18.6 percent of GDP. David Brooks is Upset that the Politicians Are Listening to Voters | Beat the Press. Related posts: Yowza. Now Even AEI is Dissing Austerity. Fed today: “fiscal policy is restraining…

  • Did Democrats’ Policies Create Big State Budget Deficits?

    Hooray. My friend Steve responded to my challenge. He posted some useless, misrepresentative data from the Wall Street Journal the other day, “showing” that blue states have bigger budget deficits, and suggesting that it’s “obviously” because of those blue-state policies. Once he’d abandoned the New-York-has-a-bigger-deficit-[in-dollars]-than-Arkansas argument, he reverted to (in my words): “New York and…

  • Private Liquor Sales in Washington State: I Jumped Ship

    We’ve got state liquor stores here in Washington for everything but beer and wine. I have to go to one to get booze instead of patronizing the store half a block away. I probably go five, maybe ten times a year, but I have friends who are cocktail aficionados who go far more often. I…

  • Where Did Our Debt Come From? – James Fallows – Politics – The Atlantic

    Just another reminder: Where Did Our Debt Come From? – James Fallows – Politics – The Atlantic. Hat tip to my sis. Related posts: Embarrassed Republicans Admit They’ve Been Thinking Of Eisenhower Whole Time They’ve Been Praising Reagan “You Deserve It” Part 243 Taxes: Obama vs. McCain The Macroeconomics of Chinese Kleptocracy Who Owns Congress?…

  • One Conservative Gets It Right

    Never in human history has a group so advantaged gone so far to cast itself as victim. “The Conservative Gene” by Robin A. Dembroff | Politics | The American Scene. Related posts: Choosing a VP For All the Right Reason Ratings Agencies and Real-Estate Appraisers: How Do You Keep ’em Honest? Delight and Abject Dismay…

  • “Asymptotically Stagnant Activities”

    When I first saw this term, I assumed they were talking about me and all the time I spend on my little blog here. (They probably should have been.) It is all about me, right? But they were actually talking about a much more interesting phenomenon: the shift in spending from “progressive” to “non-progressive” activities.…

  • Tea-Party Winners Instantly Buy Into the Beltway

    Staffing up with Washington insiders. Who’s not surprised? Or a better question: who is? Six real beauts. Here are three: Sen. Mike Lee (UT) – Spencer Stokes, an energy lobbyist. Sen. Rand Paul (KY) – Doug Stafford, VP of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Rep. Nan Hayworth (NY) — Jonathan Day, coming…

  • Pacifism: Bryan Caplan Gets It (Almost) Totally Right

    I often disagree with Bryan Caplan — often quite vehemently — but not always, by any means. He’s one of the people who I’m constantly testing my thinking against. He gets it so right with the following post that I’m going to make an exception (first time?) and reproduce his whole post here. Cliches of…

  • Mea Culpa: Rivlin-Domenici Needs Work

    I got so excited about some of the smart, obvious solutions included in the Bipartisan Policy Center’s reduce-the-deficit proposal (a.k.a. Rivlin-Domenici) that I didn’t see some of its fatal flaws. First off, it cuts Social Security, which is exactly the opposite of what we want to do: we want to make both social programs and…

  • Asymptotic Freedom

    I really love that term, though I just barely, maybe understand what it means. Eric Drexler (he of Engines of Creation, the breakout 1987 book on nanotech) thinks the source is very cool indeed. Here from November 7: …the most exciting paper I’ve seen on quantum field theory and gravitation in a long time. It offers…

  • Fiscalists and Monetarists

    Just one more example of how the left and the right are not equal ends of the spectrum. One is (at least near) the reasonable center. The other is a radical and deluded fringe — despite their numbers. I don’t think you could find a left/Keynesian/fiscalist-believing economist who would not stipulate to the spectacular, even…

  • Bleg: Why Hasn’t Europe Caught Up?

    (For blog non-cognoscenti: that’s a combination of blog and beg.) I’ve pointed out with tiresome regularity that since Europe got back on its feet after World War II,  even with its higher taxes, larger social support systems, etc., it’s grown just as fast as the U.S. But the champions of our smaller-government system have a very…

  • Jim Manzi Makes the Case for Doing Whatever We’re Doing Right Now — Or Nothing

    I have to start this post by saying how much I like Jim’s recently-bruited notion (and coinage): “causal density.” I’ve been sharing it with my friends. In my words: An event in physics — a ball being bit by a bat and landing in center field  — has very few causes, so it’s pretty easy…

  • Is the Welfare State a Free Lunch?

    We know that prosperous countries with bigger governments (mostly as a result of larger social support systems) don’t grow any more slowly than those with small governments. How can that be? The deadweight loss from those additional taxes should hurt national GDP growth, right? Answer: there are many economic effects that are exogenous to the…

  • Trickle Down: Here’s How It Happens

    Our country’s 40-year experiment in trickle-down Reaganomics has shown us one thing: left to its own devices, a free market pumps the money to the top. It’s the nature of the beast, an inherent property of the system. Despite wild-eyed assertions to the contrary, trickle-down doesn’t happen unless we make it happen. Here’s further demonstration…

  • Have Domenici and Rivlin Been Reading My Notes?!

    Their proposed deficit/debt reduction plan is here. They’re chairs of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Deficit Reduction Task Force. Here are the notes I jotted down this morning for a planned “If I Were Dictator” post. I was planning on adding, explaining, changing, organizing, etc., but I’m simply pasting them here, unedited and unsorted. Eliminate the mortgage…

  • I Balanced the Budget!

    I cut the 2030 deficit by $2 trillion! Or by $1.4 trillion — balancing the budget — without resorting to death panels or touching the Medicare budget that Republicans are fighting so hard to preserve. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=d3b306qv Your turn. Related posts: Pubs: You Had a Blank Piece of Paper for Eight Years Tea Partiers: Old, White,…

  • Greenspan: “certainly illegal and fairly criminal”

    At the Fed’s Return to Jekyll Island Forum last week, Greenspan had some eye-opening comments (emphasis mine): There are two fundamental reforms we need – to get adequate capital and, two, to get far higher levels of enforcements of statutes of fraud statutes, existing ones. I’m not even talking about new ones. Things were being…

  • Krugman on Raising the Retirement Age: Janitors vs. Lawyers

    So you’re going to tell janitors to work until they’re 70 because lawyers are living longer than ever. Here. He’s got the numbers here: since 1977, the life expectancy of male workers retiring at age 65 has risen 6 years in the top half of the income distribution, but only 1.3 years in the bottom…